Anime in 3840×2160 “2160p” UHDTV resolutions should be available by the summer of 2014, as the Japanese government is pressing for the rollout of 4K UHDTV 2 years ahead of schedule in an effort to save the TV industry from collapse.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications had formerly intended to introduce the next generation of HDTV in 2016, but has announced it will be bringing this goal forward 2 years to July 2014, to hopefully coincide with the World Cup in Brazil.

The “Ultra Hi-Vision” 2160p broadcasts will start on Japan’s “BS” and “CS” satellite channels, to be later expanded to terrestrial digital TV.

It is expected that Japan will be one of the first (if not the first) nation to introduce UHDTV, although the huge bandwidth required may mean a lengthy period of spectrum shuffling on satellite and terrestrial frequencies will be required before all channels are available.

Previously NHK had been indicating it would rather switch straight to “8K” UHD (4320p, or 7680*4320) due to the enormous cost and complexity involved with upgrading TV broadcast and receiving infrastructure twice rather than once.

According to industry figures, Japanese TV sales for 2012 were down an eye-watering 66%, and with “3D” stereoscopic TV having proved an unwanted gimmick and ever larger screens unable to sustain sales (and probably unable to fit in an increasing number of Japanese homes), it would seem the next generation of HD is the only way sales can be revived.

Certainly it looks likely that if forced to wait until 2016 for any upgrades there would not be much left of Japan’s TV industry, which is already being eviscerated by competition from lower cost producers in the rest of East Asia, making the new standard an abject necessity from this perspective.

It has also been noted that with the CAS encryption system underpinning most of Japan’s satellite broadcasts irreversibly cracked last year, the TV broadcast industry has a strong interest in pushing for a new broadcast system (its only other recourse is reissuing every CAS card in existence) – as does the video game industry, which is going to have difficulty offering much in the way of graphical improvements if it is stuck on pathetically low TV resolutions.

However, none of this addresses the reasons fewer Japanese are watching TV in the first place, something generally blamed on the atrocious quality of mainstream TV, which will presumably remain unchanged even in UHDTV.

There are mixed opinions of the announcement online – unsurprisingly considering the Internet is probably responsible for much of the declining interest in TV in Japan and elsewhere:

“Poor Sky Tree!”

“You’d think they’d be more concerned about increasing the awful quality of their programming than the resolution.”

“That is the big problem…”

“What is the point of such high resolution? Sports and nature documentaries? They can’t use it on variety shows and the drama shows look bad enough in HDTV…”

“As long as there is anime on terrestrial TV who cares about this.”

“For anime they are deliberately lowering the quality of TV broadcasts to promote disc sales so it hardly matters.”

“They need to go and beg the forgiveness of all the suckers who bought 3D TVs…”

“Expect a new standard every 3 years from here on.”

“8K is already an international standard so 4K is really just a transient standard, with 8K the main event later.”

“This is just business. Without a new format nobody has any reason to buy new TVs now, so the makers will never survive without it. Not that I’ll be buying one.”

“I think this won’t pan out as well as they hope. Before it was flat, thin digital TVs driving the upgrades, not just resolution. A new tuner could suffice for most now.”

“People are still renting DVDs so I wonder about this.”

“Will bad skin suddenly start looking good at a resolution 4 times higher, I wonder?”

“This sort of progress is simply to be expected of a high tech nation.”

“Great, now we can see each individual pore of our crappy celebrities.”

“All the lengths those poor actresses will have to go to to tidy up their skin now…”

“Even normal HDTV has eliminated a lot of actresses who don’t look good enough – how many will 4K do for?”

“The spread of this tech just depends on them making lots of porn available in it.”

Omg. Imagine compression not being invented yet. Only a couple of episodes would fit on a HDD.
Anyway, we don’t really need higher resolution for anime and JAV.
I’d rather see how well 3D anime would do instead. (Is there one yet?)

Omg. Imagine compression not being invented yet. Only a couple of episodes would fit on a HDD.
Anyway, we don’t really need higher resolution for anime and JAV.
I’d rather see how well 3D anime would do instead. (Is there one yet?)

“as the Japanese government is pressing for the rollout of 4K UHDTV 2 years ahead of schedule in an effort to save the TV industry from collapse.”

Why does Japan care, they don’t even manufacture televisions anymore. All their effort does is guarantee underpaid Chinese continue to have work and the quality of Japanese brands suffers under the hands of Chinese manufacturers vying for the lowest bid.

Clearly the nationalist dinosaurs in office once again don’t get it. Or should I say they’re still in the denial stage, which is why Japan’s economy continues to remain slumped, along with the number of people living in poverty. Or perhaps they simply prefer in that way, so they can continue to take advantage of the misfortunes of their fellow citizens. After all, if everyone were so fortunate, they would no longer have cheap manko & spirits.

It’s amazing that none of you guys think out of the box. Who cares about these TVs being used for actual TV usages. These thing could very well replace our PC Monitors. So if these new uHD TVs can do 2160p or higher, I’ll be getting one to replace my 30″ Dell Ultra Sharp 1600p monitor.

Ultra high resolution photo shots would look absolutely amazing at native 2160p or higher resolution uHD TVs. Not only that, gaming at those resolutions would be awesome as well, finally SLi, 3x and QuadX can be pushed to their limits.

with the current trend, of destroying families, how can they expect, anywhere in the world, for tv’s to be a business. after all most people today are lonely guys or gals, who have no idea of what is to sit with the whole family and watch a tv show, or get together to watch the superbowl, even if you don’t like football. aside from the
decline brought by internet it is also a symptoms of todays society decadence.
oh, and did i mention the decrease in peoples income?

Any idea of what 2ch is saying in response to the Boeing 787 f-up caused or at least contributed to by Japan? Japanese government reduced safety standards on the production of Japanese technology in the Dreamliner. Thank you modern Japan.

I think this improvement has arrived too soon. We haven’t had enough years of service out of our 1080p equipment. I don’t want to plunk down the money for an expensive 4000K set when my 1080p screen is only three years old and still works.

Japanese TV is indeed as terrible as reported. I gave my tv away to a friend to make room for a monitor that I’m using for my new PC, and I haven’t really missed it. I’ll probably be sticking with my 1080p monitor for a while (hell, it was my first proper 1080p monitor and I just got it a few months ago, that tells you how quickly I adopt these things.)

I’m finding it really hard to care about this. My PC won’t even do that res. The only thing I see to Ultra HD is huge file sizes and monster CPUs required to decode it. Maybe I’d care more if I had an 8 foot video wall TV, but I don’t.

Stop calling it “4k” already. 4k is 4096 pixels wide and is supposed to use uncompressed frames without color subsampling. It’s a standard for recording and editing cinema productions, not crappy TV. And thanks to some old broadcast grandpas it will probably even have an interlaced mode again, effectively dividing the vertical resolution by 2. Stupid marketing.

Remember the cap is what the studio animates the show in. Unless we speak of Based Kyoani, most slackers don’t have a chance of breaking 1080p. Upscales have their place but its not really what some claim it is.

It’s great that they’ll be broadcasting in 2160p mid-next year. But what about TVs supporting such resolutions, will they be made avaliable? No where in the article say they’ll be releasing new TVs to support the new broadcast resolutions. As it’s pointless to broadcast 2160p, if people are still on 720-1080p TVs. How would broadcasting in 2160p drive sales up for the TVs they have on sale now… if anything, I wouldn’t even bother more than ever before. Until I see a TV that can even support the resolution.

I’m more interested in the hardware release of the TVs, as it that might be a good replacement for computer monitors. I’m viewing on a 30″ Dell Ultra Sharp 3011 with max native resolution of 2560×1600. With UHD TVs surpassing this and supporting 3840×2160 and greater, Monitors would become a thing of the past.

I don’t watch TV much myself, usually nothing of interest are on it 99% of the time. I don’t buy TVs for their screen size either. I have a 1080P LED Projector support for upto 180″ screen projection for that. Watching any anime in cinematic theater setting at home is the best way to enjoy it.

Yah I find that odd too as in the US even mobile homes come with central heat and air.
The very idea of trying to heat your home primarily with kerosene heaters and small electric heaters would be considered crazy here.

I am poor and use separate small electrical heaters for my rooms and LED lighting. My power bill for last month was $56 (and $25 of that was administrative stuff for the power company). You can save quite a bit by heating yourself or the room you’re in instead of the whole house.

Enjoy paying a shitload of money heating 100% of a house that you only inhabit 10% of at any given time.

That’s fine when energy costs are low but in case you haven’t noticed those costs are going up. Rising oil prices, peak oil, and global warming mitigation will all impact on that lovely, inefficient central heating.

Absolutely stupid. There isn’t even a benefit to 4k in normal viewing distances. If cost is the problem, they should realize it’s due to their backward economic model. Cost of living is stupidly high in Japan that it costs more to do business there.

TV is not dead! We watch TV shows all the time. The problem with TV is how we watch it. We don’t sit around waiting for our shows to come on. We DL, Hulu, Blu Ray, Netflix and a boat load of other things. But we still watch TV Shows. We miss our show once the season ends and jump on the show once the season beginnings again. If cable and the internet was cut off just this second we would but in front of the TV as soon as our show came on other them the ones that sill have there VCR. All the networks have to do and it’s a tall order is find a new way to sell it. I hate to say but with all this “TV IS DEAD!” talk. We may not like it.

Look! Damn it! To all you young kids out there. The 20’s somethings. Network TV is based on commercials. That is why TV shows come on for free on the networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and CW. No commercials and we may have to pay for every episodes and for every TV show you watch. If the networks have there way it’s not going to be that .99 cents crap. It cost a lot to make primetime TV shows. Thanks to your dumb butt we pay for cable and it’s full of commercials. No one ever question why you pay for cable but you still get commercials?!?!

This is so silly.
So if I get this straight, the TV industry fucked it up by actually expecting people to give a shit bout those ridiculous super huge TV’s and the fucktarded 3D gimmick so now they are in trouble and the solution is to pass the burden to the broadcasters.
Fucking genius.
One industry fucks up and another one pays the price, which will also hurt stuff on TV like the anime industry beccause they’ll have to deal with the collateral damage as well.
There’s hardly a point in taking anime that far anyway since the blu rays are the ones with the re animated stuff and all that.

I have to agree with NHK, for a minimal benefit this is not worth it, they’d be better of just waiting for interest in the UHDTV to rise and then do one big upgrade to 8K UHD or whatever it’s called instead of rushing things mediocrily.

Like this matters anywy when most anime is 720p native that gets upscalled.

Though I kind of envy Japan, while most of the world is actually going backwrds with gimmickly subpr shit like netflix and the other awful streaming services that butcher and mutilate all quality, Japan is actually trying to improve the quality of the broadcasts people will get. Nothing like the US where it took ages for HDTV to finally roll out mandatorily.

“Anime in 3840×2160 “2160p” UHDTV resolutions should be available by the summer of 2014” – yeah, no. “Regular” HD has been around for how long, already? And there’s still no TV anime and hardly any anime movies produced in even 1080p.

japan laughs as their post-WWII no arms treaty rockets their economy to the point where the government is pushing for TV release dates instead of military while the rest of the world is sworn to protect them with alliances.

Lol, what was the point in broadcasting something like that in the 80’s when there weren’t any screens capable of showing it.
Whether you watch that channel or not it will all still be SD on your 80’s TV.

The TV sales are probably crap because TVs are retarded expensive in Japan. I have a 48″ Sharp LED LCD TV that cost me about $1,300 USD about 2 years ago. That same TV in Japan would probably cost about $3,000 USD today.

Wow, this can’t be really that expensive, I just looked at this same TV from Sharp with the 3D gimmick and it went for just $1,000… IN BRAZIL… I never would belive someplace to have a price more expensive than Brazil.

Japanese companies have a ‘gentleman’s agreement’, which is basically illegal elsewhere because it involves price fixing. Because of this a lot of Japanese tourists will buy cameras & electronics outside of Japan, to save a significant amount of money.

True.
They got used to making insane profits every couple of years when everyone replaced TV and they want to keep it up but back then it took real improvements to make people replace the TV.

Flat screens were a nice upgrade, widescreens were a nice upgrade, HDTV’s were a huge upgrade and slim TV’s were a pleasing upgrade as well.
Bigger TV’s were nicer and higher quality was nice but it has come to a point where bigger is no longer better and the higher quality is a nice bonus but not really as gamebreacking as it was when we went from SD to HD.
3D was just stupid though.
Maybe they should just accept it, there’s very little they can do to give everyone a reason to replce their TV now, people will still buy new TV’s but there won’t be a new TV boom like before.

Nah. I think Sony and Microsoft wont dare released a gaming console of Ultra HD just yet. I am sure Sony is not planning to launch another $600 console. The rumor report the two console will be using middle range graphic card.

Both are said using low power consuming processor to avoid RROD and YLOD (overheating problem).

The rumored spec hardly able to support 4K resolution, and if they did enable UHD, the price will skyrocket and turn off people from buying it during system launch.

“as the Japanese government is pressing for the rollout of 4K UHDTV 2 years ahead of schedule in an effort to save the TV industry from collapse.”

Why does Japan care, they don’t even manufacture televisions anymore. All their effort does is guarantee underpaid Chinese continue to have work and the quality of Japanese brands suffers under the hands of Chinese manufacturers vying for the lowest bid.

Clearly the nationalist dinosaurs in office once again don’t get it. Or should I say they’re still in the denial stage, which is why Japan’s economy continues to remain slumped, along with the number of people living in poverty. Or perhaps they simply prefer in that way, so they can continue to take advantage of the misfortunes of their fellow citizen. After all, if everyone were so fortunate, they would no longer have cheap whores & ale.

My ISP provide internet streaming of Live shows(basically, the news) if you’re subbed to their tv services too, but considering they can’t even manage to do the same with everything else, I hardly ever watch TV now. They really need to get their shit together, why would I waste my time in front of the TV when I could just multi task on my PC and watch some show in the background while playing a game or something.

TV and phones could be easily replaced by the internet if the internet could get some more juice and the ping issues could be reduced, basically, ISP would just need to improve the system and streamline some stuff for everyone to have almost no ping and insane speeds and it could be quite affordable.
Until then data caps, ping and speed still make TV superior for high definition video in real time.
The main issue here is that the ones that could change things, the ISP’s, are often also the ones that would lose their other business like tv and phones with an itnernet uprade so obviously they are holding back.

It’s really a matter of diminishing returns once you get beyond 1080, anyway. The benefits will be marginal at best on any TV under 40 inches, and won’t be anything like the jump from SD to HD, even on larger screens. Where UHD is really of value is in movie theatres, not private homes.

Why the downvotes? Anon speaks the truth. Right now to really appreciate a 1080 display you need at least a 40 inches screen, and sit no farther than 2 meters. What kind of screen would you need for a 4k image? Do they really think anyone can afford (and has space to install) 80+ inches TVs so easily?

I love watching HD (and my TV is not even a full-HD panel – still I can see the difference from SD), but if anyone hopes to replicate the hype of the SD->HD transition, then he’s going to be really disappointed.

17:34
Toshiba has a display with a higher pixel density than Apple’s retina display & has had it for years. The real problem is the interface, even duallink dvi struggles to keep up with high pixel count displays.

“A typical desktop monitor at 1080 isn’t a “retina display” by any means.”

But a television at that resolution is, so long as you’re sitting at a typical viewing distance. At a distance of 2 meters (6.5 feet), someone with 20/20 vision isn’t going to notice any perceptible difference between 1080p and 2160p on a 50 inch display. There may be four times as many pixels, but you can’t distinguish them from that far away. As far as television goes, 4k will mostly be a gimmick that will add cost to screens without adding any real value. 8k is even more pointless, since you’d need to be sitting less than 1 meter from a 50″ display to notice any slight difference from 4k, and would have to crane your neck back and forth just to watch a show.

Even if you are sitting close enough to a 4k screen to be able to see the added detail, and are viewing a native 2160p broadcast, anime isn’t likely to look any better. The animators can only draw in so much detail, after all. Even the difference between watching anime on a DVD or a 1080p blu-ray is marginal. Lines might look a bit sharper, but otherwise you’re not getting any more actual detail.

Manufacturers can’t expect television sales to continue as they have in recent years. People were willing to upgrade their old CRT televisions to higher resolution flat screens, but minor features and quality improvements don’t provide nearly as much incentive to upgrade again.

Actually, these resolutions are designed so that 720p and 1080p will look exactly the same on these TV’s as it would on normal HDTV’s, all it would need to do is scale one pixel into 4 for 1080p, and scale 1 into 9 for 720p. Anime will still look the same

“10-bit encodes, and they can encode any 720p anime episode into 100-120 mb with excellent quality.”

Hopefully you’re not talking about the group [Hi10], because their releases look like shit. Compression is meaningless if it isn’t lossless.. like how mp3 is inferior to flac. Just because you don’t notice doesn’t mean no one notices.

2K is only very slightly higher resolution than standard 1920×1080 HD. And 4K doesn’t have to be on a large screen – stick to the same size screen and have smaller pixels. I hate to sound like a Mac fanboi (which I’m not), but the ultimate aim is to get the screen resolution comparable to that of the human eye, i.e. the “retina display”. A typical desktop monitor at 1080 isn’t a “retina display” by any means.

But the second point is that even if we get 4K anime, will we actually just be getting upscales? Right now, a lot of mainstream anime is made in 720 and then upscaled to 1080 for Blu-ray release. Moving to native 4K will multiply the storage and processor requirements of the studios by a factor of around 9. Yes, I know about Moore’s Law, but somebody still has to pay the upgrade bills.

There are already some anime-sites which specialize in 10-bit encodes, and they can encode any 720p anime episode into 100-120 mb with excellent quality. Also 1080p with 150-200 mb/ep.
Compression and encoding settings matters the most, which Coalgirls doesn’t really use.

TV is a dead-end anyway IMHO. I’m 27 and I don’t even consider buying my own TV set when I move out from my parents’ house. I just don’t like the idea of sitting and passively watching what some broadcaster wants me to watch, mixed with a shitload of commercials. I watch anime almost exclusively anyway and as there’s no anime on TV in my country there’s almost nothing on TV that interests me. Oh, forgot about The Walking Dead… but I won’t buy a TV and subscription for one show 😉

Quality matters to many people still. A near cinema experience is what many people want. Not straining our eyes looking at a little screen on a gadget or PC monitor (even the good ones look tiny compared to my home theater). So, no I disagree that this is a dead end. It is the only way to do it for many of us.

You know you can hook up a computer to a tv right? I have my 42″ tv on my desktop at the side of my 24″ monitor, dualscreening, i watch shit in one while i play in the other, or whatever i like, i love having my tv pluged at my pc.

I find the biggest problem is that broadcasters and cable providers can’t let go of the idea of channels, time slots, and region locking.

So instead of forcing me to buy 50 channels on basic cable followed by 3 tiers of upgrade channels to get the one that airs the one show I want to watch, give me the ability to subscribe to a particular show (like a YouTube Channel but through micro payments), let me watch it on demand and in whatever quality I choose when it best fits MY schedule and don’t region lock it to the USA only. You know what? I might even be willing to pay slightly more for a totally commercial free version.

There’s a reason HULU, Netflix, and the like are growing in business while the cable co’s are losing it.

TV isn’t a dead end. Broadcast networks are. Streaming and download services will eat them alive in less than ten years. I’ll buy a nice TV-set when I don’t live in a one room flat, any more, but I’ll only use it for Netflix and blu-rays.

Here’s the issue: The ones bringing you TV and Internet are very often the same guys.
When in the history of manking has any industry voluntarily given up to make room for their replacement?
We’d still be riding horses if the same guys were in charge of selling horses and cars.

Pretty much. Frankly to me it’s kinda of a mistery why it seems we’re moving to internet-tv (not broadcast only) just now… Tech is not the point, it’s pretty much what we can already do with a good desktop PC.

Yeah… TV is pretty much dead, but not everyone noticed that simple fact yet. Probably it will keep itself alive for generations to come, like with radio. Though, unlike radio, I can’t see any situation were a TV still fits in my life. And even with radio that’s pretty much only while waiting for someone like my dentist….

Sometimes i feel a bit envy of our forefathers. They only have one hd resolution of their eyes, and the whole world is their screen. The world is bigger and full of expectations back then. Now, the whole world can be cramped into one little box.

Do you want to be wondered by the ordinary or bored by the extraordinary? At first, you can appreciate the feelings of appreciation had by those without the technology to make their tiny experiences redundant, but if you think about how lucky we are to live in a time where we are able to do so much and collect so much information that it seems boring to look at a live stream of a robot on another planet, I think, personally, we have it pretty good.

“TV is a dead-end anyway IMHO. I’m 27 and I don’t even consider buying my own TV set when I move out from my parents’ house. I just don’t like the idea of sitting and passively watching what some broadcaster wants me to watch”

I don’t want to be mean, really. It will seem like I’m starting a fight so I need to put in that disclaimer.

But if you really want to do something active, not passive, perhaps it’s already time to move out?

There’s reasons not to which I understand, but it can lead to a lot of great things for you.

“I just don’t like the idea of sitting and passively watching what some broadcaster wants me to watch, mixed with a shitload of commercials.”

right, right…way to show the man and validate yourself.

TV isn’t dead, paying monthly cable and satellite subscriptions for 300 channels is dead because like most people you probably only use 4 channels and from there only about 5 shows. Netflix is in the now and the future of TV

It wasn’t the expense so much as it being a gimmick and there being very little worthwhile 3D content available. HDTVs were similarly expensive when they first debuted, but they didn’t flop because they represented a real improvement and the content was forthcoming.

I do, however, have serious doubts about significant amounts of UHD content (aside from the occasional sporting event) becoming available within the next decade or so. Furthermore, ordinary people haven’t even finished transitioning their media libraries to HD yet (hell, I know quite a few who still only have SD TVs), and I don’t think they are ready for another change. There’s also the state of Internet infrastructure to be considered: is there really enough bandwidth out there for streaming UHD to work? Lastly, they are certainly making a big mistake if they think that console gaming (which is itself a troubled market) is going to generate enough demand to push UHD over the hump.

The public isn’t ready for such a change yet. Many as still transitioning as you said and in many things we still have SD stuff.
Also HD screens had many benefits over old CRT TV’s. Less power, less space bigger screen, more attractive etc, this new things is just about more resolution which quite honestly seems pointless since 1080p is already showing details we wouldn’t like seeing.
The only reason this TV companies are crushing and trying to force this changes to the public is because they got themselves in a big profit circle during the HD transition and instead of viewing it as a temporal boost they started viewing as constant growth and making stupid investments.
They got their hands in the jar with the honey and now they can’t live without it.
Well tough luck,the public ain’t gonna buy this shit if you try to force it to them right now. HD is here to stay for quite a few years more. Try again in ten years time dudes. This shit is gonna fail hard and they will just add to their expenses pointlessly by trying to make people change when they aren’t ready.
I am amazed this TV makers don’t realize that.
And am saying all this while actually being a tech freak. Let as fucking enjoy our HD TV panel for a few years before trying to force new shit down our throats and invade the inside of our wallets. For now we won’t a piece period with what we have like the period we had with our CRT screens.
Nether our stamina and especially our wallets can handle your constant greed.

TN: Whew! This is first time I’ve ever felt blessed for being poor, surely christian god was watching after me all these years. Day 1 purchase! I will max out my credit card and gloat about it on facebook. Ha! Take that all you HDTV owners. What? A UHDTV will set me back how much?! And my credit card only has a 1K limit?! FFFUUUUUCCCCCKKKK! Goddamn this poor credit rating!